Pitboss 18 Lurker Thread of Infinite Wisdom

[Qgqqqqq]

Time is absolutely a massive attribute in player skill, and one that ties closely in with commitment/engagement. And it's not an end-game thing, either, although that's obviously where it starts coming through strongest - it's one that starts coming through from t0 in sims or not. It can be subbed out for experience - either through head-micro, just seeing the obvious from familiarity (which is much more prevalent in FFH in many areas) or good gut.

And ultimately that's why it becomes more important as time goes on, not just because there are more decisions, but because familiarity decreases as we have less practice at the later stages - both from MP games rarely reaching that stage, but also just from a lack of competitive SP games reaching those stages (and the different tactics required, OC).

Anyway, time is a massive resource from start to finsih - but it's not one that instantly jumps out. When Bob looks at my '39 save, it would take him maybe 20 minutes to catch up - more, probably. So there's a lot of doubled-up time, and even then a lot of the ideas that come will be ones the other has alread thought off - the advantage of a fresh perspective is incalculable, of course, but I don't think you can just reduce it to that. So sure, Badass is better than one of the individual players, but that's just inherent to the game - you're not facing OH, or Fintourist. You're facing the team, and that ultimately and fundamentally comes with a different set of strengths and advantages.

- xpost with ton.

[Gaspar]

Yeah, time is a major factor for a variety of reasons all game long but its attrition rate is higher endgame. In the early game most of the competent players on the site have enough time to play well. Mid-game, that shrinks to the quality players. End-game, only obsessives (TBS) and teams (Fintourist) can realistically meet the level of time commitment necessary to win. It is the biggest flaw in Civ4 - and really the whole series - the endgame, when it matters, is just a complete slog and very few people enjoy it.

Anyway, this is why I'd never play a game alone again. And honestly, even on a team with an obsessive I often found myself making decisions based on the level of time-sink required if I made them - i.e. not attacking a rival because the agony of 100s of combats per turn in addition to needing some level of precision on the rest of the decisions made me want to gouge my eyes out.

[Cheater Hater]

So does anyone want to play an Industial/Modern era game? Presumably with the settlers fixed?

[Commodore]

Is there a way to lessen the time sink of the endgame other than "win before it gets there" and "play on small maps"? What kind of ramifications would there be if number of cities maintenance kept growing (instead of stopping at 6 GPT/city) to discourage larger empires? Would games stagnate (since there's no reason to go to war to get cities after a point), or would the large armies just be built more slowly?

Fintourist is great, but I don't think people truly grasp the awe-inspiring magnitude of Old Harry's patience. The quickly forgotten RB Demogame? The one where most teams imploded and Plako/Novice were clearly destined to win at an amble? That was OH's first time to shine, and his attention to detail even there was staggering.

[Cheater Hater]

Is there a way to lessen the time sink of the endgame other than "win before it gets there" and "play on small maps"? What kind of ramifications would there be if number of cities maintenance kept growing (instead of stopping at 6 GPT/city) to discourage larger empires? Would games stagnate (since there's no reason to go to war to get cities after a point), or would the large armies just be built more slowly?

Fintourist is great, but I don't think people truly grasp the awe-inspiring magnitude of Old Harry's patience. The quickly forgotten RB Demogame? The one where most teams imploded and Plako/Novice were clearly destined to win at an amble? That was OH's first time to shine, and his attention to detail even there was staggering.

There's a middle ground between 4 and 75+
What are the city counts for FinHarry and BGN at this point?

Hooray, the Demogame got a mention! Old Harry also seems to be able to get and keep a team all the time--even here it's not just Fintourist; THH also appears to still be around as a ded-lurker (even if he isn't willing to play modern war turns).

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well it looks like OH is going to win unless TBS sneaks in a culture victory so I might as well write some up my thoughts.

This set-up has an enormous amount of luck so who wins doesn't matter that much but how you play the game. Now some players are better than others but I really don't care about that. I care about drama but I've already wrote most of my thoughts about the drama but there's still a little more. Rowain's post @ #666 articulates the case against Krill better than I could and it's not acceptable to create an unbalanced map even if you think there's a 0% chance the game will finish. Because changing the rules in the middle of a game is okay on this site there's always a chance that a game will finish, after being bandaged, even if not for the right reasons.

When I started lurking this game I thought this game would crash and burn in a fun way within three months, like that double-move game that let LP in. The reason; the more players put into a game the more problems there are. And the problems tend to have synergistic effects (for example problem-->having a bad time-->wanting to play less-->playing less-->more problems) which means adding players causes the likelihood of failure of not to rise linearly but exponentially. 12 people is already a recipe for disaster as Gaspar said so 33 is just . The only way to stop this is to hand-pick players that don't cause problems in the first place but that didn't happen here. I disagree sockpuppets and other negative things that happened to RB ruining this game. They didn't help but my point would have caused the game to fail alone. I thought it would be a nice and fun way to end my RB career after I got a job and didn't have time for it anymore.

However, the game was able to go on by allowing replacements to control multiple Civs. This allowed the game to go on and drag to two years not three months but I was too hooked to stop. This changed the rules in the middle of the game because the original rule is to get a replacement who still tries to win the game. I don't care about this but just pointing out what RB did here and why the mapmaker wasn't exactly wrong about the game not lasting.

This might be my last post until the inevitable Civ6 thread drags me out of retirement...I'm pretty sure that something will happen in this game before it's over due to the sheer amount of time left and the number of players being enough.

[Ceiliazul]

If we can take Arcanclave next turn then our 15 Commando Cav and 1 Commando Inf can hit a selection of cities:
- Frontline (4 cav) - required culture city

If im reading this right, one of TBS's culture cities has only four defenders? I realize they need to take arcanclave first, but how do you leave the golden goose so lightly defended against a team so well known for clever attack vectors?

But maybe im reading it wrong because old harry didnt seem that excited about it...

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah, I thought that too. But I don't recall that being his, so I think maybe it just meant a required culture city as in it would need to be taken to expose culture.

But then he only talked about it his commando units, so idk.

[Ceiliazul]

The legendary cities are Elensafar, Wendlyn and Frontline. Losing frontline emds the game (given BGN's irl situation)

[Commodore]

Welp, that's game. Krill confirmed his determination to spike BGN's tires; no help from that quarter and BGN's health doesn't need a try. Given the disparity, would have been hard even for TBS keyed-in to stop that.

Brick, start rolling the maps for the Next Huge One please.